Testing Arkansas Teachers: The 'Quick-Fix' Politics of Reform

The attempt by Gov. Bill Clinton to improve academic
Standards in Arkansas by giving a basic-skills
test to certified teachers typifies most of the
myths the public associates with teaching. The
passage and implementation of the Governor's plan also demonstrate
the tendency of voters to be satisfied with empty
gestures instead of solutions, a tendency that is especially
unfortunate at a time when we need effective responses to
the problems in teacher education.

One myth at the heart of the current reform movement--in
Arkansas and across the nation--is that academic standards
have somehow declined behind the backs of the public.
An educational system, however, simply reflects the mentality
of the public it serves. The long-time American disdain for
subjects that do not have immediate career utility has given
us a system in which traditional reading and language instruction
have been devalued. It is only because the analytical-
thinking skills developed by the old methods and materials
have become an economic commodity that government
and business are now involved in "raising standards."

Another myth is that politicians had to step in only because
teachers refused to police their own profession. Governor
Clinton has made this point repeatedly. Such reasoning
ignores the fact that the teaching profession in Arkansas is
controlled by the state. The state sets course requirements
for teacher training, certifies teachers, and employs them.
Teachers have as much to say about the direction of their
profession as sanitation workers have in determining their
own routes.

Strangest of all is the myth that it was necessary to test all
teachers to find the few who were thought to lack basic skills.
The prevailing logic here was that a statewide test was needed
because local school districts were powerless to remove incompetent teachers on their own. Not so. Arkansas has no
tenure law; the only people who get a contract for more than
one year are superintendents and some principals. Arkansas
has no all-powerful union that can keep bad teachers on the
job when their employers wish to fire them. Until this year,
there was no American Federation of Teachers here. Even
the long-established Arkansas Education Association does
not have chapters in every district. Many superintendents
openly warn their teacher:; that membership in the A.E.A.
will not be tolerated. Arkansas districts may be unwilling to
fire incompetent teachers, but they are not unable to.

Genuine reform cannot be accomplished by token legislation
designed to give the public a false sense that something
is being done. The Arkansas basic-skills test is a good example
of such legislation. The law requires all certified teachers
to take and pass a basic-skills test by 1987 or lose certification.
In addition, all certified teachers must either pass their
subject area in the National Teacher Examinations, or acquire six additional hours of college credit in their fields.

The basic-skills test is an empty gesture; it's too easy to
give an accurate measure of a teacher's fitness to teach. The
N.T.E. requirement is useless, mainly because most teachers
will choose the easier option of taking six additional college
hours. (The six-hour option is a superb example of bureaucratic
reasoning: Poor teachers who already have one or two
college degrees and up to 30 hours beyond that will become
competent by taking six more hours at the colleges that produced
them.)

The worst thing about the basic-skills test is that the public
has such an incomplete and misinformed notion of what it
involve . In general, most Arkansans seem convinced that
what is on the test is not as important as the fact that a test is
being given. Giving teachers the state driver's test would
probably have done as much to satisfy public opinion (and it
would have cost a lot less).

The test given in March had three sections: mathematics,
reading, and writing. The mathematics questions, like this
example, were elementary:

In preparation for the 6th-grade graduation ceremony,
the school custodian determines that the school has
1,200 folding chairs. However, the kindergarten classes
will use 240 of those chairs for their graduation. How
many chairs will be left for the 6th graders? A. 950, B.
960, C. 1,060, D. 1,440.

The reading section merely tested our ability to define educational,
psychological, and statistical terms that were taken
out of context, and to extract the main idea from stodgy paragraphs
about education. All questions in both sections were
multiple-choice. The writing section required us to compose
a 200-word letter on a set topic-my assignment was to ask a
local businessman for money to send band students to Washington,
D. C.

Nevertheless, when the grading was done (and it has been
very unclear just how the grading was done), 10 percent of
the 28,276 certified teachers who took the test in March
failed. This is precisely the failure percentage that, according
to the former A.E.A. president, Peggy Nabors, Governor
Clinton was determined to achieve.

Employers should have the right to determine the professional
fitness of their employees, and I support the idea of
having teachers demonstrate their competence by taking a
test. I am, however, sorely disappointed in the quality of our
test and the loopholes in the overall program.

There was a better way to go about it.

When the American Board of Surgery wished to introduce
more stringent evaluation standards for practicing surgeons,
it did not try to do it at gunpoint in a year and a half. First, in
1976, the A.B.S. notified that year's graduating surgeons that
they would be certified for only 10 years. At the end of that
time, they would be required to pass the new battery of examinations
in order to be recertified. Any surgeon who has
been certified since 1976 must take the exam. Surgeons who
were in the field before then were courteously informed of the
new examinations and invited to take them on a voluntary
basis. The already-certified surgeons were provided with
reading lists and syllabuses. In short, the surgeons were
treated at all times as if they were intelligent human beings
who cared about the quality of their work and the future of
their profession.

Apart from the basic-skills test, Governor Clinton's reform
package contains some excellent measure , but few can succeed
if teachers and administrators are not committed to
them. The Governor should be reminded that genuine educational
reform must come from two directions.

First, there must be a complete overhaul of the teacher-training
programs. It makes no sense to go after the practicing
teachers without stopping the malpractice that is going
on in the schools of education. There should be no such thing
as a major in education, because education is not an academic
discipline. Courses in education should not even exist
at the undergraduate level. The only "professors of education"
should be classroom teachers who have demonstrated
their ability to teach children. Then they can presume to
teach teachers.

Second, there must be a change in the way the public and
its elected representatives think about teachers. If state governments
want results, they need to start looking at teachers
as partners, not pawns. We have teachers in Arkansas who
should not be teaching anyone, but we have good teachers,
too, Every state does. They are the experts whom reforming
lawmakers should consult.

Lawmakers who prefer to humiliate and alienate their
teachers by passing quick-fix legislation may win votes, but
they will lose the opportunity to bring about worthwhile and
lasting reforms in the schools.

Peggy Maddox teaches English at Central Junior High
School in Hot Springs, Ark.

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